“Turning? Where have you been?” She leaned against the fence behind. “Tom got all of the poetry, and I got all of the riot.”
“That’s true enough.”
“Don’t see why you’re still here,” Emmaline added. “You went to that ball, didn’t you? Surely, someone there was good enough to marry. Better than being stuck here.”
In fact, there had been someone good enough, more than good enough.
She was the one who wasn’t good enough for a duke.
They watched as Mr. Hughes delivered another blistering lecture, followed by a refusal to fix the rafters of a cottage he claimed was not clean enough, even though Wes had approved it and cleanliness had nothing to do with the state of the rafters. Emmaline scowled in his direction.
He wasn’t a bad sort, really, but he did her uncle’s bidding, which made him not particularly a good sort either. Lord Henshaw was a viscount, after all, and this was his land. It had been her father’s land before that, and she was a viscount’s daughter besides, but there was little enough she could do. “You’ve got that look on your face,” Tom murmured, as he joined them in the shade of the oak tree.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Meg returned.
“It’s the same look my Emma has now, which means trouble brewing.” He sighed. “There’s no sense in fighting a parish constable, but will she ever listen?”
“The Duke of Pendleton’s constable is a perfectly reasonable man,” Meg pointed out. “Hughes ought to be kinder.”
Emmaline smiled at her, fondly, and a touch drily. “It’s sweet you think so.”
“You think I’m naïve.” Mr. Hughes despised Emmaline because she refused “to know her place” or “mind her tongue”. It went without saying that she was ten times more competent and knowledgeable than he could hope to be and that rankled most of all.
Emmaline snorted. “You’ve had to eat too many turnips for me to think that of you.”
Meg snorted back and they were like two companionable pigs.
And then Mr. Hughes said something about tripling the rents, causing a grown man to cry and two women to boil with anger. Meg wasn’t clear on the details, but it had something to do with an eviction if proper deference wasn’t shown, raised rents as punishment. Tom and Meg groaned in unison as Emmaline rushed to interfere.
“He had her clapped in the stocks last time she put her nose in,” Tom frowned. “I’d run in there and stop her, but then they’d both wallop me.”
“When was this?” Meg demanded.
“Just last week.”
“I didn’t even know we had stocks.”
“I think he may have had them built special, just for Emma.”
“Oh dear.”
Emma said something foul enough to have Mr. Hughes recoil, blanching.
“Oh dear,” Meg said again.
Tom shook his head. “Better let me have my boy, there, before he spits up on you. I know that hiccup all too well. Naught to be done about my wife though.”
Meg stood, still cradling the baby. “I have a better idea.”
Tom sighed as though he were suddenly three hundred years old.
Little Tom opened his mouth on a wail, cheeks boiling red. “His mother’s temper,” his father muttered as Meg sailed into the fracas, wielding a crying, nauseous baby as her weapon.
“I’ll have you in irons, madam!” Mr. Hughes roared, wiping at the dirt Emmaline’s temper had kicked all over his pristine white stockings and the old-fashioned buckled shoes he was so proud of. She did have a flair for drama.
One Meg was only too happy to emulate.
Especially as Wes was trying to fit himself between them but to little avail.